Talk:Episodes, films, and shorts/@comment-26973802-20150217020640/@comment-26973802-20150217164533
I admit I have no evidence of the "sadistic" thing, but I do have reasoning behind the "not wanting to annoy the fans", if you're talking about King Sombra's style of villain defeat. Let's take a look at our villain history. *'Nightmare Moon' - The impression they gave was that she is Luna corrupted, and therefore was restored to normal. Different than your standard villain redemption because she wasn't evil to begin with, just turned evil. Later, Lauren Faust implied Nightmare Moon to be a separate entity manifested from Luna's jealousy, but as nothing in the episode confirms it it's up for us to decide. *'Discord' - Turned to stone, just like the first time. Which of course does raise some question as to how Celestia will prevent his return when the Mane 6 are no longer around, which is answered through his redemption, which comes after the next two. Even so, he is fan-favorite villain because he is fun to have around, which is why they brought him back for redemption. *'Queen Chrysalis' - Like Discord, is a fan-favorite villain, or was before she was overshadowed by Tirek. Unlike Discord, her return is less likely because she goes flying over the edge of Canterlot, which is extremely high up a mountain. Unless she was faster than Rainbow Dash and could recover with her wings, she should not survive that. But because fans liked her so much, for various reasons, they refused to consider the possibility that she was dead and said "she survived for sure and has to return", prompting Hasbro to request that Katie Cook bring Chrysalis back in the comics, and presumably the reason Meghan McCarthy has never mentioned her. *'King Sombra' - Chrysalis I can understand why they'd want her to survive because they liked her so much. King Sombra has very few fans (me and Screwball among them) and is considered the worst villain of the show, despite being the darkest and most intelligent. He is destroyed up front, and while people wanted to believe he survived and could regenerate from his horn, Meghan confirmed his death, much to the disappointment of everyone. People were disappointed that their least favorite villain was killed off. *'Sunset Shimmer' - I'll acknowledge that with her she is a different kind of villain than the others as she is not pure evil, and Equestria Girls has a different style than the show, so it's only natural that they choose the redemption path with her like they did with Discord. She is however the last major villain to be reformed. *'Plunderseeds' - While they are definitely destroyed, they're not considered characters, and very few even count them on the "villains" list. *'Lord Tirek' - He's darker than Chrysalis, almost as dark as Sombra, and has the most epic battle of the series, as well as being a reboot of a G1 villain who is destroyed. However, instead the Mane 6 just send him back to Tartarus and imprison him in a cage. Now, if you want him to be dead you can say that they did destroy him because if they did, Tartarus is where he'd end up and maybe Sombra has a cage in Tartarus too, but that's not the impression they gave by showing Tirek imprisoned there (even though Dragonball Z showed Frieza and Cell locked in a cell in HFIL (hell) after they were unambiguously killed). *'The Dazzlings' - No two ways to look at their defeat - Their power is taken away when their stones are destroyed, and they run off. End of story. They could have had them actually transform into their siren forms when they reached full power, and had them destroyed the way their astral projections were (being destroyed in that form wouldn't be so graphic, it'd be just like King Sombra's death) so why didn't they? Basically, they have not destroyed a single villain character since King Sombra was killed. Despite what I said about Tirek, it is far easier to say Chrysalis is dead than him. Sunset Shimmer reformed, the Plunderseeds aren't characters, Tirek is imprisoned, and the Dazzlings are de-powered and run off. People did complain about Sunset Shimmer but now they like her reformed. And I stand by, they decided not to go down the old-fashioned path anymore because people complained that their least favorite villain was killed off, that told them the fans want their villains to stay breathing.